Straight from HBO, the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience will be hitting Europe with numerous dates from May to June, and then a resumption of North American touring in September and October. All concerts are set to be overseen personally by award-winning composer Ramin Djawadi. See below for more information and dates:

LOS ANGELES (September 26, 2017) - The critically acclaimed Game of Thrones® Live Concert Experience Featuring Ramin Djawadi will bring the world of Westeros to arenas across Europe starting in May of 2018. Additionally, due to popular demand, a second North American leg of the tour has been added for the autumn of 2018, giving fans the opportunity to watch in wonder as famed composer Ramin Djawadi leads an orchestra and choir performing music from all seven seasons of the iconic, Emmy® Award-winning HBO series. The new dates for the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience Featuring Ramin Djawadi will include new music and footage from Season 7, as well a new custom stage design and mesmerising visuals courtesy of state of the art video technology.

From a report on EW, HBO has revealed the directors of the final six episodes of Game of Thrones. They’re all familiar names: Miguel Sapochnik, David Nutter, and David Benioff & D.B. Weiss. The showrunners, who are also writing four of the final six episodes, will be directing the finale.

James Hibberd goes into more detail, and in particular provides speculation as to how episodes will be divyed up, with rumors suggesting Sapochnik may direct three of the episodes.

HBO has just announced that long-time series writer and producer Bryan Cogman is the fifth writer behind on the successors. EW’s James Hibberd has what details there are to be had, but understandably HBO are tight-lipped about just what ideas are being developed. A couple of months ago, Linda and I recorded videos discussing some of the areas of Martin’s world and its history that might be of interest.

Of all the writers involved in developing these successor shows, Cogman is unique in being the only one to have worked on the series, and has done so from the start—even back to the original pilot, when he was assistant to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

HBO has announced that you can now preorder the Season 7 Blu-ray and DVD, and revealed a bunch of new details while also sharing an exclusive clip featuring Harry Lloyd (Viserys) narrating the history of House Targaryen from the Fall of Valyria to Aegon the Conqueror turning his eyes to the Seven Kingdoms. Nice art, I have to say!

Here’s the full list of detaisl from HBO:

New York, N.Y., September 14, 2017 – The record-breaking phenomenon is back with a season that proved to be well worth the wait! Action-packed from start to finish with the series’ most epic battles yet, the HBO® drama series Game of Thrones: The Complete Seventh Season will be available for Digital Download September 25th and on Blu-Ray™ and DVD December 12th. The latest season of Game of Thrones featured the most-watched premiere and finale episodes in HBO history, and the series remains the most-awarded drama series in Emmy® history, with 109 nominations to date and winning the 2015 and 2016 trophy for Best Drama Series.

Available December 12th, The Blu-ray™ and DVD sets are packed with exclusive new bonus content including audio commentaries on every episode, two new behind-the-scenes featurettes, and, for a limited time only, a bonus disc containing Conquest & Rebellion: An Animated History of the Seven Kingdoms, a 45-minute, never-before-seen extension of the Clio Award-winning History & Lore features included on previous individual Blu-ray™ season releases. Narrated by some of the series’ biggest stars including Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) and Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark), the companion piece to season 7 reveals the fascinating story of how the world of Westeros as we know it came to be– including what happened the last time a Targaryen invaded the realm!

Available September 25th, the Digital Download release for Game of Thrones: The Complete Seventh Season includes an exclusive new “Creating the North and Beyond” featurette that takes fans behind the scenes of Jon Snow’s epic trek north of The Wall and his latest battle with the Night King’s army.

Blu-ray™ & DVD Exclusive Bonus Features Include:

Conquest & Rebellion: An Animated History of the Seven Kingdoms- From the Game of Thrones realm comes the never-before-seen story of the tumultuous events that shaped the world of Westeros for thousands of years before the series start. Cast members Pilou Asbæk (Euron Greyjoy), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger), Conleth Hill (Varys), Harry Lloyd (Viserys Targaryen) and Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) team up to narrate the animated telling of Aegon Targaryen’s attempts to conquer the Seven Kingdoms, written by show writer Dave Hill.
From Imagination to Reality: Inside the Art Department- Extensive two-part featurette detailing the astonishing work of Production Designer Deborah Riley and her Art Department, dissecting the process behind the creation of this season’s incredible new sets, including Dragonstone, Casterly Rock, Highgarden, the Dragonpit, and more.
Fire & Steel: Creating the Invasion of Westeros- Revisit this season’s most pivotal moments with this behind-the-scenes featurette, including interviews with key cast and crew breaking down how fans’ favorite moments were created.
Audio Commentaries- Commentaries on every episode with cast and crew including David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Jacob Anderson, Gwendoline Christie, Liam Cunningham, Kit Harington, Lena Headey, and more.

Blu-ray™ Exclusive Bonus Features Include:

Histories and Lore- 7 new animated pieces that give the history and background of notable season 7 locations and storylines including The Dragonpit, Highgarden, Prophecies of the Known World, the Rains of Castamere and more all narrated by cast members including Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Aidan Gillen, Iain Glen and more.
In-Episode Guides- In-feature resource that provides background information about on-screen characters and locations.

Digital Download Exclusive Bonus Features Include:

Creating the North and Beyond- Behind-the-scenes featurette delving into the massive undertaking of creating and filming the battle in Episode 6 of Season 7.

In Season 7, Daenerys Targaryen has finally set sail for Westeros with her armies, dragons and new Hand of the Queen, Tyrion Lannister. Jon Snow has been named King in the North after defeating Ramsay Bolton in the Battle of the Bastards and returning Winterfell to House Stark. In King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister has seized the Iron Throne by incinerating the High Sparrow, his followers and her rivals in the Sept of Baelor. But as old alliances fracture and new ones emerge, an army of dead men marches on the Wall, threatening to end the game of thrones forever.

After some down time, HBO’s arrangement with global events provider GES—announced in July—has come to fruition with the announcement of the first date for the re-vamped, expanded exhibition. From October 28th, a “limited engagement” (no precise details, but the exhibition website allows tickets to be ordered as far in advance as January 7) will be taking place in Barcelona’s Museu Marítim.

Other locations and dates will be announced in the weeks and months to come. One big difference from prior exhibitions: there’ll be a fee for entry, but this fits with the idea that it’s also on a much larger scale than previous exhibitions.

News spread last night of a talk Casey Bloys, HBO’s president of programming, held at Moravian College. According to reports, Bloys indicated that in a bid to mitigate the leaks that have plagued the show the last few seasons, the producers had decided to write and film multiple endings to attempt to hide the real ending. According to the report at EW, the showrunners have previously indicated that they’re going to new heights to attempt to prevent leaks for the final season, and this seems to be just one of a number of techniques they’ll be using.

Alternate endings created to prevent leaks is not new to television, with shows as varied as 24, Lost, The Simpsons, and fellow HBO show Sex and the City having used the stratagem. As to whether these efforts will be successful when it comes to Game of Thrones? Only time will tell.

Great news for fans of George R.R. Martin’s science fiction: Nightflyers will be going to series at SyFy, although the official announcement has not been made as the deals are still being worked out regarding broadcast rights both in the U.S. and overseas.

This follows news from back in May that SyFy was noted himself, this show is based on the rights he sold many years earlier that led to a low-budget film that did not find much success (you can see the poster for that film above). GRRM has no role in the production, as he is exclusively under contract with HBO, but he’s hoping for the best and in particular hopes that the show will look as good as SyFy’s The Expanse.

Last week, Linda provided a review of the very handsome Stark fountain pen from Italian pen maker Montegrappa. That pen was one we bought ourselves, as we do admire fountain pens, but shortly after we did our review we were pleasantly surprised to receive a package straight from HBO: Montegrappa's Targaryen ballpoint pen. Naturally, we just had to review it, and I provide the honors this time around:

Yes, my handwriting is nothing to write home about! But I think that should give those interested in a pen like this a sense of what they're getting. All in all, the Montegrappa series of pens has been one of the unique and interesting Game of Thrones-licensed products. The pens are widely available, especially at HBO's own store:

We've posted a video review of one of Montegrappa's officially-licensed Game of Thrones pens. Montegrappa is a famous name in Italy, a maker of fine pens and other luxury items, and their licensing Game of Thrones has led to four (now five) beautiful pens.

The Stark pen featured above -- a fountain pen with a medium nib; other options include fine and broad nibs, or rollerball or ballpoint versions -- is one of the initial four pens which each take their inspiration from a different Great House. The fifth, and newest pen, is a high-end limited edition in solid sterling silver or even 18 karat gold, but those run anywhere from 3,200 to 52,000(!) euros.

This pen came to us by way of Amazon.com, via a Madrid-based authorized dealer named Iguana Sell (noting them down because they did an amazing job with prompt shipping and really good packaging), but you'll find most of the varieties of the pens available from a number of sellers besides them, some at even lower prices:

Of course, the HBO Store (both the US and EU varieties) also carries the pens as well, and sometimes you'll find special deals on all their Game of Thrones products.

We’ve been referring to this for a couple of months as something in the works, but Linda and I are now very happy to join in making the official announcement of the launch of Martin Studies International Network.

What’s that, you may ask? See the press release below to learn more:

The Martin Studies International Network is the first scholarly association devoted to the work of George R.R. Martin. It is dedicated to academics and fans of the worlds created by George R.R. Martin. Its aim is to provide George R.R. Martin’s work with the academic and expert attention it deserves.

The founding members of the Network are active members of the fan and academic communities:

The episode guide for “The Dragon and the Wolf” is now mostly up-to-date, including Linda’s video review of the episode (which we’ll embed below) as well as a book-to-screen consideration trying to piece out what’s inspired by the novels to date, what’s likely to happen in future novels, and what’s definitely not something that fits within the scopes of the books.

As Linda says in her video, there may or may not be a Season 7 overview video from her—stay tuned!

Launching just as we were in the midst of travels, we were remiss to make note of the fact that the long-awaited graphic novel adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “The Mystery Knight” has now been released.

Bringing back together the successful team of Ben Avery on script and Mike S. Miller on art, the graphic novel adapts the 3rd of the Dunk & Egg novellas, set about 90 years prior to the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Over at Unbound Worlds, Random House’s SF/F site, there’s an interview with Mike Miller regarding the Dunk & Egg adaptations over the years and some of the choices he’s made in the course of them.

HBO has released details for the final episode of Game of Thrones season 7: “The Dragon and the Wolf”—good title—will have a 79 minute, 43 second running time, making it the longest episode of the series to date. There are rumors that season 8’s episodes will potentially run even longer as a matter of course, but we’ll have to wait and see if that holds true.

The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones season 7, “Beyond the Wall, is out, and Linda has gotten the episode guide filled with thoughts on what’s inspired by the books and what may be related to what’s to come and what definitely isn’t happening, as well as an analysis of the episode which we’re embedding below:

Thanks to all of our travel lately, some of the previous episode guides did not get their Book-to-Screen sections, but those have now been filled: “The Spoils of War” and “Eastwatch”. The latter also contains a second video in the Analysis section, looking more closely at a particular bit of information revealed in “Eastwatch”.

IGN has an interesting interview with Jane Goldman, one of the four (or five) writers working on ideas for a successor series to HBO’s Game of Thrones. In the course of the interview, Goldman’s quite cagey, but she does share just a little bit of information that provides some additional parameters for what her pitch is.

Linda and I recently published a video on our Westeros.org youtube channel regarding annulments in Westeros. This is in reaction to something on Game of Thrones—Linda explains more in the video—but suffice it to say, it contains spoilers for season 7 of the series.

(And no, still not watching myself, but I know the general gist of what’s been happening so far, which is more than enough to confirm that I made the right choice for myself.)

As previously mentioned, Linda and I decided to take some time while on our vacation to make a video discussing the Game of Thrones “successors”—the four (or five) in-development concepts that follow-ups to the show. We’ve now finished the series, deciding that three parts was more than sufficien to kick around a dozen or so potential ideas. You can find them all in the playlist embedded below:

While vacationing, Linda and I decided it was time to share some thoughts on the Game of Thrones successors—as GRRM calls them—that HBO and several writers are developing as a potential follow-up to the popular series. In this first video, I lay out some of the details of what we do know about the projects, and some of the parameters that help us understand what the projects aren’t.

With any luck we’ll have the next video—discussing some ideas of stories outside of Westeros that HBO may be considering—up later tonight.

While we’re away up north (north to us, anyways) for our vacation, Linda and I are getting back to doing semi-regular videos about A Song of Ice and Fire, to compliment the Game of Thrones post-episode videos she’s producing for our Episode guides.

The first one—shot on the OnePlus 5 (my first Android phone, after 5 years of my trusty Nokia 920) to make the process more convenient while we’re up here—ends with an unexpected guest star as we discuss.. well, Fire and Blood, which is coming to readers sooner than expected in part because the first volume is practically finished already. Find out how that works below:

Yesterday Linda managed to film her analysis of “Stormborn”, and it was hurriedly edited together before we left for our vacation. Linda posted it while we were on the road, and only now have I recalled to post about it here!

Not only is the episode guide updated with the video—which we’ll include below—but there’s also the book-to-screen analysis, looking at what details fit the novels, which seem possibly related to future events, and which are simply not possible because of the substantial changes from book to screen.

Answering the questions following his mysterious blog post from a few days back, George R.R. Martin has revealed that Fire and Blood is closer to publication than many thought. A book focused on the history of the Targaryens in Westeros, drawn in large part from material originally created for The World of Ice and Fire but which was largely redacted or severely compressed from that book, the amount of material is so sizable that it will appear in two volumes.

Per George:

No publication date has been set yet, but it’s likely that we will get the first volume of FIRE AND BLOOD out in late 2018 or early 2019. The second volume, which will carry the history from Aegon III up to Robert’s Rebellion, is largely unwritten, so that one will be a few more years in coming.

And for those who wonder about the state of The Winds of Winter...:

Whether WINDS or the first volume of FIRE AND BLOOD will be the first to hit the bookstores is hard to say at this juncture, but I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018… and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream…

Well-timed to the season 7 premiere, Funko has prepared a slew of new toys in their popular Pop! figure line -- as well as some new entries in their Dorbz figures, and even two figures debuting in their Rock Candy range of figurines which are focused almost entirely on female heroines and characters of note (we say almost entirely because somehow Harry and Ron from the Harry Potter series managed their way into the line). You can see some of the new selections in the gallery below:

This is quite big news in relation to the future of Game of Thrones-related projects. While we’ve previously reported on the fact that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are stepping back in their involvement in future “successor” shows—they’ll have executive producer credits but won’t be involved in the day-to-day work and writing—it had been widely assumed they wanted to get away from TV and work on film; in fact, a few years ago they landed a deal to adapt a novel for movies.

So it’s with quite a lot of surprise that we learn that they are diving back into TV after Game of Thrones wraps up, and by diving we mean they’ll be showrunning and writing for this new original series, titled Confederate. According to the press release, posted below, it will begin production immediately following the final season of Game of Thrones.

Last year, Linda and I had the great privilege and pleasure of visiting Northern Ireland to look at the Game of Thrones doors scattered throughout the country, all thanks to Tourism Ireland. And this past weekend, we were able to tease that Tourism Ireland had something new up its sleeve to draw attention to Northern Ireland:

Since then, word’s gotten out about the absolutely stunning tapestry—inspired by the famous Bayeux Tapestry created to commemorate every episode of the last six seasons… and with additional panels to come as each new episode of season 7 is released. Fans visiting Belfast will be able to see the tapestry in all its glory at the Ulster Museum from July 22nd.

We’re back from Madrid—you can see our talk at Espacio Fundacion Telefonica on Youtube—but while we were there, Linda managed to film her video for our Dragonstone episode guide. The guide also includes a book-to-screen section, using the new format used since the previous season, now that the material is beyond the scope of the novels.

Games have been a part of the A Song of Ice and Fire licensing universe for a long time, starting in 2002 with Fantasy Flight Games and their award-winning A Game of Thrones collectible card game, followed by their A Game of Thrones board game. Since then there have been two different RPGs, two different computer games, a tactical tabletop game—and that’s just counting the A Song of Ice and Fire games; Game of Thrones has led to yet another computer game, board games, and more.

After a bit of silence on the A Song of Ice and Fire gaming front, suddenly two exciting projects are advancing towards publication.

Update: We’re pleased to say that we’ve been invited by Casa del Libro to sign at their store at Gran Via 29 prior to the talk. The signing will be from 5pm to 6pm.

Linda and I will be speaking at Espacio Fundación Telefónica, who have kindly invited us with the collaboration of the Spanish publisher of A Song of Ice and Fire and our The World of Ice and Fire, Gigamesh, the organizers of the Celsius 232 convention, and streaming source of Game of Thrones in Spain Movistar+. A few years ago GRRM took part in a similar event.

Fans in Madrid can visit the event page for information regarding the time and details of the event, as well as reserving a free pass. For those who can’t make it, the website will stream the event live.

As always, we’re very much looking forward to visiting Spain. That said, since we’re traveling late Sunday evening, busy in Madrid on Monday, and traveling homeward on Tuesday, Linda’s coverage of the season premiere will likely be delayed and/or be briefer than normal.

HBO has sent out a press release discussing the imminent arrival of Game of Thrones on July 16th, including loglines and titles for the first three episodes. You can read them below, but naturally if you consider episode titles spoilers… well, these are spoilers:

Fans have flocked the world-over to past Game of Thrones exhibitions put together by HBO—we reported on one such exhibition—but there was a bit of a pause this last couple of years… until now, that is, as HBO has just announced that they are mounting a touring exhibition that will travel the world.

No specific dates or locations announced as of yet, but it will kick off in Europe starting Fall 2017. Read the full press release below:

Glendale, CA, [July 6, 2017]—- Inspired by and filled with the breathtaking images and enthralling artifacts from the hit HBO series GAME OF THRONES, this all-new exhibition will drop fans in the center of the Seven Kingdoms for an up-close and personal look at authentic props, costumes and set decorations from the show. In collaboration with HBO Global Licensing, global events provider GES is designing and building the new 10,000-square-foot interactive experience, and will exclusively tour the exhibition to worldwide destinations starting Fall 2017. The tour will kick off in Europe, with the first location to be announced soon.